


For Friendship, For Love (The Plan)

by hellhoundtheory



Series: Leaves of Grass [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, High School, M/M, Sex Education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 16:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2116008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellhoundtheory/pseuds/hellhoundtheory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy sees the obvious between her students. She consults her fellow teachers. A plan is made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Friendship, For Love (The Plan)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Calamus-Leaves by Walt Whitman, again.
> 
> Also, if you read Be Not Too Rough with Me before this, I changed the date in that work (it had previously been Mardi Gras because I hadn't had a timeline for the series yet, now it’s Armistice Day, though that’s not strictly mentioned). 
> 
> AND I put 'just mentioned' characters and that bothers some people so let me know if you want me to change that

It all starts when the school hires Darcy Lewis to revolutionize their Health and Wellness department and bring sex education into the 21st century. Her Master’s thesis on expanding typical high school curriculum to include oral and anal sex had charmed the Board of Education, especially after one of the Board member’s sons had gotten the clap from his girlfriend, perfectly versed with condoms, but not knowing that he was supposed to use a dental dam when he had cut his lip during football practice. 

When Principal Fury had brought her in to the first staff meeting of the year, just a week before school started, he had introduced her as Ms. Lewis and it sounded just like her old professor. She corrected him, saying that Miss Darcy would be fine. It made her feel like she belonged in _Pride and Prejudice_ and less like someone who showed genitalia to horny teenagers for a living. 

What? She had some standards.

She automatically hits it off with Natasha, who insists on being called Romanoff if any students are present. Darcy, Pepper (Miss Potts, the business and technology teacher), and Jacques (Monsieur Dernier, le prof de français) all speak French together while Natasha and Bruce (Dr. Banner, sciences) speak Bengali, or, alternately, Natasha, Clint (Barton, art and visual media teacher), and Fury speak Russian. 

Apparently the Vice Principal, Maria Hill, speaks all of those languages, because she likes to flit between the conversations. Tony (Stark, the ‘best’ English teacher) speaks tech with the engineering teacher, Sam Wilson, who has a thing for ornithology that he and Clint share. And that’s pretty much how staff meetings go. 

Until school starts and the reason Darcy became a teacher reveals itself.

“You can’t just ‘ship’ students, Darcy,” Pepper admonishes her as Darcy swivels around their shared office in the dustiest corner of the building. Darcy had explained what shipping was after Pepper caught her using her computer to write Once Upon a Time fan fiction. 

“If they aren’t boning, they should be. That kid looks like he needs a pick-me-up.”

Pepper’s mouth turns sour at the thought. “Please don’t talk about my students that way.” True, she hadn’t had Steve and Bucky since their mandatory freshman computer science class, but many teachers used her computer labs and Steve was always so kind to her, asking her about how her day had been, and prompting Bucky to ask how the new freshman were treating her.

They had been inseparable since she taught at the middle school (hell-hole that it was), and she had seen them become young men with an ache in her heart that told her she’d never be able to survive motherhood if she had her own children.

Darcy kept pestering. Pepper said that they had to figure it out on their own.

That’s when Darcy heard Tony saying the same thing to the kid’s language teachers, “I remember teaching them ‘A Separate Peace’ and barely being able to breathe for all the sexual tension. How can you not have seen this?”

Natasha shrugs, “I’ve never really seen them together until today.”

Dernier gives a wavey hand gesture, as if he can’t put together the words in English, “Steven is toujours writing letters to his friend when we practice the courriel—eugh, email—for the AP. I didn’t know he was a student.”

“Are we talking about Steve and Bucky?” Darcy sneaks into the conversation, slinging an arm around Natasha’s shoulders (Darcy is fairly certain she is the only one who can do that without getting killed).

Tony gestures frantically as if she had just answered all his prayers, “See? She just got here and she sees it! Was it because of the sex ed stuff?”

She shakes her head, “We’re just doing drug safety right now. It’s all in the way they look at each other. Bucky’s always touching him, putting his arm around him, fixing his hair, fixing his collar,” She mimes the actions on Natasha, much to the Russian teacher’s amusement, “Steve just stares at him like Bucky hung the moon.”

Tony gives his fellow teachers another pained look, “I’ve been dealing with this for _years._ Literature needs to stop being so subtly gay, my god! We watched Titanic after reading _A Night to Remember_ and they kept looking at each other just as the other one was looking away. It’s agony!” 

Romanoff puts up her hands, “I just saw them walking in the hallway and looking very companionable. I was about to tell James that I didn’t know he had a boyfriend, but Stark said that they weren’t dating.”

Surprise of all surprises, Dr. Banner joins them, sipping tea, “Is this about Tony’s crusade to get his favorite students to realize they’re painfully in love?”

“Shut up, they’re your favorite students too,” Tony says, getting defensive about the idea of him actually caring about his students.

“Close. Jane’s definitely my favorite physics student, but I’d say Steve is solidly my favorite biology student. Bucky was pretty good at chemistry, but I think that’s just because he liked making things explode.” It’s funny that the kids are so well-loved among the staff. 

Darcy knows for a fact that James is Natasha’s favorite—as much as she has favorites, simply because he is apparently very good at Russian—and Steve is definitely Jacques’ favorite, especially given their mutual love for WWII history. Personally, she thought Bucky’s attitude towards sex was very forward-thinking for a horny teenage boy and she liked discussing sexual education with Bucky, even though they hadn’t gotten to that section in the curriculum yet. It made her sad that her class was only a semester and that she wouldn’t get the kid’s shitty jokes for the whole year.

“Are we talking about Stucky?” Clint says, guzzling from his purple coffee mug, paintbrush tucked behind one ear and white teeshirt covered like a Pollock painting. Darcy curses internally. She should have thought of that portmanteau, she had been going with ‘Starbucks,’ because of Steve’s very American birthday and perhaps her own proclivity for coffee.

“Yep,” Tony says, popping the plosive sound.

“Steve’s been drawing Bucky since he was like twelve. They just need to get a room,” Clint groans, going to refill his coffee. Much like Pepper, Clint Barton had been a middle school teacher before older teachers at the high school had retired, opening up a position for them. The Health and Wellness teacher had only recently retired, and that’s why Darcy was here, now, and so very annoyed about the fact that her fellow teachers had done nothing to help these poor boys.

The next staff meeting, she does a poll. It isn’t very subtle, but she asks a couple of questions, saying “Raise your hands if these students are totally dating,” about a few students, including Jane and Thor, who don’t raise many of the staff’s hands but are highly shippable in Darcy’s book, and she puts Steve and Bucky in the middle.

Everyone raises their hand, albeit somewhat reluctantly in the case of Fury and Hill. She looks at them quizzically, “How do you even know them? They’re like the least trouble-making students _ever,_ ” she says.

Fury raises his eyebrow, the other covered with his menacing eyepatch, “Steve Rogers may be a saint and a great student, but he does not do well with bullies. Anyone treats anyone with anything less than the golden rule and he calls them out, much to his own detriment.”

Hill smirks, “And then Barnes finishes the fights Steve shouldn’t have started in the first place.”

“Why isn’t it on their records?” Darcy asked, knowing she had requested the records of all of her students to make sure she wasn’t dealing with anyone who she should talk to (her undergrad had been psychology, after all).

“Sarah Rogers doesn’t need the trouble and Bucky would do anything for Steve. It’s a non-issue,” Fury says, before motioning to Darcy to finish. 

She simply says, “I have a few emails to send, but I’d like to do some inter-departmental work. Let me know if you’re interested, I’ve been a little _stuck_ on ideas.”

She gets a flood of emails.  
~  
From: cbarton@mchs.edu  
To: dlewis@mchs.edu  
Subject: Inter-departmental project  
I am in. I am so in. This shit is definitely happening.  
~  
From: tstark@mchs.edu  
To: dlewis@mchs.edu  
Subject: Omg crying yes  
HELL YES LET’S DO THIS.  
~  
From: nromanoff@mchs.edu  
To: dlewis@mchs.edu  
Subject: James and his friend  
I am intrigued.  
~  
From: bbanner@mchs.edu  
To: dlewis@mchs.edu  
Subject: The torrid love affair of Steve Rogers and his eyeballs boring into his best friend’s skull  
What the hell. The kid needs to stop staring at Bucky’s hair and pay attention in class.  
~  
From: jdernier@mchs.edu  
To: dlewis@mchs.edu  
Sujet: Je voudrais que Steven soit heureux d'être aimé par son ami  
Je suis prêt!  
~  
To these emails, she sends out:  
From: dlewis@mchs.edu  
To: jdernier@mchs.edu, bbanner@mchs.edu, nromanoff@mchs.edu, tstark@mchs.edu, cbarton@mchs.edu  
Subject: Inter-Departmental Meeting Time  
To my colleagues who have chosen to join me on this adventure,  
I believe that we should meet every Monday and Friday morning (to avoid staff meetings on Wednesdays and the lack of food in the staff room on Tuesdays and Thursdays) and to create a game-plan for the week on Monday, and to assess our degree of success on Friday.  
I know the coming weeks will be difficult, but I believe that we can whip this ship into ship-shape before the Winter Formal in December and reap the rewards until graduation.  
I will bring coffee and donuts for our next meeting (we should also make a schedule of who brings coffee and pastries at this time).  
Until Friday,  
A bientot,  
Darcy Lewis  
~  
Clint offers to cover Monday’s snacks and coffee as they head out to their cars Thursday afternoon.  
~  
From: ppotts@mchs.edu  
To: dlewis@mchs.edu  
Subject: Bullshit ‘Inter-departmental work’ I call bullshit  
Darcy, I know what you’re thinking and don’t do it.

(She replies that she has no idea what Pepper is talking about.)  
~  
From: swilson@mchs.edu  
To: dlewis@mchs.edu  
Subject: Meddling  
Dude, they need to figure it out for themselves don’t let Tony rope you into this I thought you were supposed to be a health teacher not a match maker. 

(She doesn’t deign to reply.)  
~  
Their first meeting gives Darcy a hand-cramp as she tries to write down all the ideas. 

“Movies featuring gay romance. As long as it’s PG-13, it’s all good,” Clint says, disappointed that he can’t really show movies as an art teacher. 

Natasha swoops on that one, “I have the perfect thing. Putin hates it so James will love it, and it almost looks like them back when James had long hair.”

Darcy scrawls _Natasha, gay Russian movies,_ before hastening to write down all the other ideas. 

Jacques sniggers, “I can teach the vocabulaire sexuel on Armistice day. Steven will rouge so funny because he knows that’s how most of their parents were born, hein?” 

_Dernier, sex words in french, baby boomers._

Bruce shrugs, “I’ll do our anatomy chapters. Then neuroscience and hormones if that doesn’t make it obvious.”

 _Bruce, dicks and brains and endorphins,_ goes down on paper.

“Poetry unit. Walt Whitman. Done,” Tony declares, as if he’s been waiting all year to say it.

_Poetry about plants shaped like dicks, Tony._

“I guess I can do figure drawing. Steve’s leaning towards doing something with anatomy and body policing and politics for his concentration. I could,” He rubs his brow, “I could tell him to ask someone to sit for him. So he can have a traditional drawing experience with a live model, like he would in college. Or maybe have him do a statement piece about gay marriage. He’s into that kinda stuff.”

“So basically you’re going to pressure him to have Bucky take off his clothes for him.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, barely awake and clearly daunted with the prospect.

“Hell yeah,” Darcy mutters under her breath, writing down, _Bow chick a wow wow portraiture, Clint._

“What about you, Darcy?” Tony asks, tenting his hands. 

She smirks, “Well, another portion of my masters was to show curriculum you could use to teach anal and oral sex, so I called up some of my friends in the business…”

“What business?” Dernier asks, brow raised curiously. 

“The mob?” is Natasha’s contribution. 

“No,” Darcy corrects, “The _industry._ ”

Clint gives her a weary stare, “The music industry?” 

“Big oil?” Bruce asks. 

“The porn industry, Jesus Christ do I have to spell it out for you?” They look at her, each a little affronted, except for Tony who is gleeful, “Anyways, I directed this sex ed movie. And I think it will have the desired effect.”

~

“Oh dear,” Pepper mourns from where she and Sam are listening with their ears pressed to the wall.

Sam sighs into his palm, “Shit, they’re really doing this.”

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me if I miss translations:  
> Courriel- email (AP French term, french people use email, but most AP frenchies start to use courriel out of habit)  
> Toujours- Always, all the time, every day  
> Sujet: Je voudrais que Steven soit heureux d'être aimé par son ami- Subject: I want Steven to be happy to be loved by his friend ).  
> Je suis prêt!- I am ready  
> A bientôt- see you soon  
> vocabulaire sexuel- sex vocabulary


End file.
